Tuesday, 28 July 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:50): I rise to speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026, which are being debated together as cognate bills. The coalition up-front is not opposing either bill, and I want to put that on the record from the outset because whatever concerns are raised in the discussion of these bills are not arguments against reform in the area. The concerns are just an ongoing discussion about how this reform will actually work when it reaches the businesses, operators and farmers we want to comply with it. The key catalyst for these bills is probably well known to this house. There were two suburban chemical fires, one in West Footscray in August 2018 and one at a Campbellfield chemical waste factory facility in April 2019, both of which exposed serious weaknesses in how Victoria regulates dangerous goods, and both were linked to illegal chemical stockpiling. Both released toxic smoke into surrounding communities, contaminated waterways and put first responders at risk. In April 2020 the then Minister for Workplace Safety announced an independent review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, and that was conducted by Andrew Palmer KC, now Judge Palmer.

I make all those points briefly but deliberately, because everything that follows in this contribution should be measured against the fact that the harm here was very real and avoidable, the potential remains and reform is very necessary. The Dangerous Goods Transport Bill creates a new principal act regulating the transport of dangerous goods including explosives and high-consequence dangerous goods by road, by rail and by vessel on inland waterways. The occupational health and safety amendment bill brings the handling of dangerous goods, excluding transport, into the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. The Dangerous Goods Act 1985 is repealed on commencement. Underneath that sits a duties-based approach. A person involved in transport of dangerous goods must ensure that those goods are transported safely and without risk to public safety, property or the environment. The regulations give effect to the Australian Dangerous Goods Code and are to be developed after these bills pass, with an in-force commencement of 25 April 2028.

There is a great deal in this package that the coalition supports. The duty extends across the supply chain. It does not stop at the drivers and operators; it reaches consignors, contractors, company directors and senior executives, and I think that is the right step. The businesses that cut corners on dangerous goods are rarely doing so because of a decision made in the drivers cab of a truck; they are doing so because of a decision made somewhere above it, and the law should reach that decision. The explicit duty on officers to exercise due diligence follows the same logic. Directors and senior leaders will need to understand the risks their operations carry, ensure the systems and resources are in place and satisfy themselves that those systems work in practice rather than on paper. It is a meaningful lift in expectations, and it is very welcome.

I want to single out one measure in particular, in clauses 85 to 87, which allows an obligation to comply with a direction to be redirected to a related entity that had control or an officer who knew or ought to have known of the circumstances and who had influence over the entity’s compliance. The minister has described this as an attempt to stamp out phoenixing. Anyone who has looked into the operations behind the worst conduct in this sector knows how readily a company can be wound up and reconstituted with the same people and the same trucks doing the same practices, and if these clauses work as intended, they are the most valuable things in this package. The strengthened enforcement provisions, the improvements to incident notification and record keeping and better coordination between jurisdictions are all quite sound, and I do not intend to canvass them at length.

The coalition has scrutinised this reform actively, and that is appropriate, because there is a great deal about it that this house is being asked to accept without seeing it up-front. The central concern around that is that almost everything of a practical consequence in this reform sits in the regulations that do not yet exist. The duties in the bill are expressed in terms of high-level principles. The government’s own explanation is that they will be expanded upon in the regulations. The adoption of the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road & Rail happens in the regulations. The detail that determines what a small operator in Victoria actually has to do differently on Monday morning is all in the regulations. And the regulations are to be developed after the bill passes. The clearest illustration is clause 25: it creates an indictable offence, but it begins with the words ‘If the regulations require’. So the Parliament is being asked to create an indictable offence and to leave the definition of the conduct that it attracts entirely to an instrument that nobody has seen. The house is therefore being asked to legislate a framework and take the content of it on trust.

I appreciate that there is an argument for doing it this way: the subject matter is technical, the national code moves and there is merit in leaving the detail to the instrument that can be updated without returning to the Parliament every single time. But it does place a real obligation on the government. If the Parliament is not going to see the substance of this reform before it votes, then the government carries the burden of demonstrating that the process which produces the substance will be genuinely open, genuinely consultative and genuinely responsive to the people who have to live with it as a result. That is a view shared by everyone that I and my colleague in the other place Cindy McLeish found in the industries that we consulted.

The government has been telling us for some weeks that these bills implement the accepted recommendations of the Palmer report, so it is worth looking at what the government actually said when it responded to that report back in October 2022, some four years ago, because the picture is not quite as clear as that suggests and as what the second-reading speech suggests. Judge Palmer made 49 recommendations. The government supported 22 of them in full. It further supported 15 in principle, in most cases subject to consultation, and then it said 11 required further consideration. So 22 of 49 were supported outright, 27 were not. There is no criticism for taking time over complex reform. That response was published in October 2022 and these bills were introduced in March 2026, so in the 3½ years between those two dates the Parliament has not ever been told what became of the further consideration the government said it needed. We are simply being asked to assume it happened and legislate.

The recommendations from those consultations have been parked, and there are some not incidental ones amongst them. There are provisions in this package that stakeholders are now raising with us, and I will go through a couple. Recommendation 9.1 concerns inspector powers of entry, including entry to residential premises. The government’s response was that this required further consultation on associated risks and potential safeguards and that consultation would be undertaken with the other agencies, duty holders and industry to ensure the entry power included appropriate safeguards. Clause 51 of this bill permits an inspector to enter residential premises without a warrant and without consent. I have read fairly carefully through it and I cannot see the safeguards that go along with this, the safeguards that were present in Judge Palmer’s original recommendation. I would want the minister to perhaps clarify what consultation was undertaken and what safeguards came out of it.

Recommendation 9.2 concerns step-in powers. Judge Palmer recommended that those decisions not be subject to merits review. The government’s response said the detail required further consultation with stakeholders and identified one matter in particular as needing that consultation, which was the availability of merits review. In clause 94 of this bill the table of reviewable decisions runs to 16 items. Directions under clause 75 are not amongst them. Interventions under clause 76 are not amongst them. Costs notices under clause 77 are not amongst them. The government singled out the merits review as a question that needed to be consulted on but has not arrived at the answer that Judge Palmer proposed, without ever telling Parliament what the consultation found.

Recommendation 9.4 concerns cost recovery. The government supported it in principle and committed that implementation would follow the Department of Treasury and Finance’s pricing for value guide. Clause 77 of this bill contains no cap on the amount recoverable and expressly includes legal services within reasonable costs. It would be good if the minister could explain how an uncapped costs notice that includes a regulator’s legal fees is consistent with the guide.

There are a couple of further matters worth comment. In October 2022 the government set out its preferred structural reform option. Its words at the time were that its preference was to create a new Dangerous Goods Act harmonised with the Occupational Health and Safety Act, with explosives and high-consequence dangerous goods remaining under the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 in separate regulations. That is option two of the two options Judge Palmer put forward, but that is not what is before us. What is before us is option one: handling is folded into the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 is repealed altogether and transport gets its own act. At some time in the last 3½ years the government has changed its position on the fundamental architecture of the reform, and it has done that without announcement, without explanation and, as far as I can find, with no mention of it in Parliament until the bills were tabled. When did that decision get made, on what advice and who was consulted beforehand? Good law can only be helped and aided by showing the workings and how we arrived at the final position.

In the minister’s second-reading speech the minister devotes an entire section to explaining that the Dangerous Goods Act does not currently apply to the transport of reportable priority waste. Judge Palmer found that this exemption meant dangerous goods waste escaped requirements applying to everything else, and the government has therefore decided to remove it. The reasoning is set out. The Parliament was told that under the existing act primary producers hold clear and practical exemptions for the storage, use, handling and transfer of dangerous goods used in connection with their businesses, excluding explosives and high-consequence dangerous goods. Those settings recognise that most on-farm activity is low risk and own use. That act is repealed by clause 173 of this bill. Clause 9 of the bill sets out seven exclusions from its operation, but none of them include primary producers. In fact the words ‘farm’, ‘agricultural’ and ‘primary producer’ do not appear anywhere in the bill. They do not appear in the explanatory memorandum or the second-reading speech either. The government’s response to the Palmer report does not mention them.

The government identified one exemption it wished to remove and explained it at length, but on another exemption affecting every farming business in this state it said nothing about it at all. This should be clarified. Is the omission of primary producer exemptions a deliberate policy decision the government has chosen not to announce, or is it an oversight? I would add one further difficulty: the explanatory memorandum explains that the transitional regulation power in clause 176 exists so that the existing licence-holders under the act can be moved onto equivalent schemes under the new one, which is sensible as far as it goes. But farmers hold no licence precisely because they are exempt. The transition mechanism has been built for people who are already inside the licensing system, but there is a very, very important gap for those who are outside it but that the bill now imposes upon. That seems to be another gap.

The member for Eildon in the other place and I have consulted with a number of organisations who have put their concerns to us. They go to how this reform will work in practice. The Victorian Transport Association raised the powers relating to entry, which they consider too broad and insufficiently directed at the dangerous goods themselves. My colleague in other place has canvassed that, and I accept that the powers are largely consistent with what already exists under occupational health and safety law. The second concern that has not been answered, however, is the seizure of a vehicle without formal notice capable of being communicated to the owner of the vehicle or the freight. Subclause 53(2) requires a written record of seizure to be given to the occupier of the place. When a loaded vehicle is stopped on a public road, it is not obvious who that is. In this industry the operator, the vehicle owner and the owner of the goods are frequently three different parties. When a vehicle is seized, the commercial consequences fall on the people who may have had no involvement in the conduct that prompted it and no timely way of knowing what happened or recovering whatever goods or value they need to recover to continue their legal business. A notice requirement would not weaken the power or delay the seizure, so I will inquire why that is absent.

The Victorian Farmers Federation supports the intent of these reforms but is concerned they should not impose disproportionate burdens on primary producers. Farmers are not transport operators by trade, yet they are captured through normal farming activity. Every property handles and moves fuel and handles pesticides, herbicides, fumigants and fertiliser. Ammonium nitrate is both a common fertiliser and a high-consequence dangerous good. The federation also asks that the framework recognise the seasonal and time-critical nature of farming, where the movement of inputs happens in very narrow windows, at planting, spraying and harvest. It would seek meaningful input to the regulations when they are made so that farmers are not unfairly exposed. That goes back to what I said earlier in the speech about the regulations that come after the bill, and our expectation really is that deep consultation on the regulations must occur. The Australian Institute of Health & Safety is broadly supportive, describing this as progressive and necessary modernisation. Their warning is that the reform requires clear regulatory guidance, a structured transition period of 12 to 24 months and targeted capability uplift across the industry. Without that they say the complexity risks undermining the safety and governance outcomes that this reform is actually designed to deliver. None of these organisations oppose the bill. Each has identified a problem that will be left unresolved in the regulations. Again I urge the government to engage with all of these three directly as those regulations are developed.

The package is also being sold in part on harmonisation. The argument is that aligning Victoria with the national code will reduce compliance costs for operators working across borders, and over time that should be true. I think that is absolutely a noble priority aim. There are too many things where Victoria is an outlier, and the cost of doing business is an overhead when you are working in Victoria.

There were a couple of inconsistencies, though, in that goal. The first is that the minister’s own second-reading speech concedes that the bill includes and maintains differences from the national approach and gives a broad general duty as the example. Victoria is imposing a duty that operators in other jurisdictions do not carry. That is not to say the divergence is necessarily wrong, but it has not been fully justified, especially if it creates a disharmony with the national standards. That sits uneasily beside the productivity case that is being made for the package. I think that is worth having a look at.

The second one is recommendation 11.2 of the Palmer report, which was:

That amendments to the ADG Code be automatically adopted –

so as to –

… allow the National Transport Commission’s full transition period of 12 months.

The government supported that recommendation in full. It said so in October 2022 and explained that the existing act restricts the transition period to six months and would need to be amended. But I have looked for the 12-month transition period in this bill, and it is not there. Clause 3 adopts the Australian dangerous goods code as enforced from time to time, which is automatic adoption with no transition period at all. A recommendation the government supported in full is not present in the bill, and the people who have to implement it are going to wear the consequences, particularly the cross-border operators – again, where the harmonisation argument is meant to be helping, not hurting, productivity.

I endorse the call made in the other place for a structured independent review after implementation so that this Parliament can establish whether the intended safety and governance outcomes are actually being delivered on the ground rather than assuming they are. That is all the more important given that the regulations are going to be developed after we have passed the bill, not before, and that those regulations are going to be technical in nature and need considerable consultation. So really, in a genuine sense, the proof of the pudding is actually going to be after the bill is passed – not now.

The coalition is not opposing these bills. Moving from a framework written in 1985 to a modern, risk-based, transport-focused regime is necessary and I think somewhat overdue. But it is four years after the review and the reform is only now just in front of us. It is in regulations that have not been drafted, and it is giving effect to a code that has not been adopted. It is creating offences whose scope cannot yet be described, because it has not been written, and it is commencing in April 2028, eight years after this review was announced. That is not efficient government. And given the origins and the catalyst for this reform date back to 2018, you think, ‘Why has it taken this long to come into power given the gravity of the risk that we have?’

I think probably the state deserves better in terms of the health and safety of our workers and our first responders. It certainly deserves better in terms of the productivity of the state, which has been, as we all know, trailing the nation for some time. I think more focus and priority should have been given to this, and yet it was not. The government has not told this house what became of the 27 recommendations it did not support in full and has not told this house why it abandoned the reform architecture it said it preferred originally and why it has gone to this alternate one. It has not told the house what becomes of the exemptions our farmers rely on now, which is a pretty big gap. I reiterate my colleague the member for Eildon’s point that this bill has taken too long to be actioned. But I acknowledge that it is a necessary step in the right direction, and we will support the bill.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (17:15): I have been waiting as well to talk on the cognate debate. It has been a while since I made a contribution on a cognate debate, and this one is especially important to me. As some members of this place will recall, workplace safety matters do very much strike to the heart of my values and the values that we all share on this side of the chamber. The two pieces of legislation we have got before us today are the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 and the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026, and they are about keeping our community safe, protecting our incredible emergency services personnel and ensuring that the rogue operators who gamble with people’s lives are finally held to account.

To truly understand why this legislation is so necessary, you have to look back at events that shook our state and particularly, for me, the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Just a few years ago, we all remember the horrific scenes in April 2019 when a massive chemical waste processing facility in Campbellfield – for those so interested, in the electorate of Broadmeadows; it was a very tough time – erupted in flames. For those of us living and working in the north, that day is certainly burnt in our memories, excuse the phrase. Toxic black smoke blanketed the sky, five of our local schools were forced to shut down completely and residents were told to lock their doors and stay inside to avoid the poisonous air. It took more than 175 heroic firefighters and 40 appliances working around the clock for days to finally subdue the blaze. The human cost was truly terrible, with two factory workers hospitalised, including one who suffered serious burns and another who sustained a severe eye injury. The financial costs were absolutely staggering. The Environment Protection Authority had to step in and oversee the clean-up of that site, which dragged on until December 2021 and ultimately cost taxpayers $6.5 million.

That disaster followed the West Footscray warehouse fire in August 2018, one that I know in Western Metropolitan Region was felt very much. Millions of litres of illegally stockpiled toxic chemical waste caught fire there, and that inferno took more than a week to put out, requiring the massive effort of over 200 firefighters, dozens of those brave first responders. They later reported health issues – musculoskeletal pain and deep fatigue from exposure to the smoke and the chemicals. The environmental devastation was absolutely heartbreaking. Toxic fire water run-off flooded into Stony Creek, killing more than 2300 fish and countless native eels and requiring the removal of 70 million litres of polluted water and nearly 3000 cubic metres of containment sediment. After those fires, joint inspectors from WorkSafe Victoria and the EPA uncovered 14 different sites across Melbourne’s north and regional Victoria that were illegally stockpiling highly dangerous chemicals. WorkSafe was left to lead the clean-up of 13 of those sites. It became painfully obvious that the old rules simply were not working. The Dangerous Goods Act 1985 had sat there largely unchanged for nearly four decades. It was outdated, incredibly clunky and out of step with our modern occupational health and safety frameworks.

This is exactly why our government commissioned Andrew Palmer KC to conduct a comprehensive independent review of the entire system. The final report was delivered in 2022, handing down 49 recommendations to drag our dangerous goods laws into the modern era. Our government accepted the need for fundamental reform, and the two bills before us today deliver on 24 of those crucial legislative amendments, starting with the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026, which takes the handling, manufacturing, storing, processing and use of dangerous goods and incorporates it directly into the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. By doing this we are creating a streamlined, unified safety framework. We are introducing a broad overarching general duty that requires anyone undertaking activities with dangerous goods to ensure, so far as it is practicable, that their work is safe and without risks to health, safety and property.

We are also taking a step further than the old laws. The new framework demands that operators protect the environment from harm as well, which is a vital lesson learned from the utter devastation of Stony Creek. At the same time, we are introducing the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026, which creates a brand new standalone act dedicated entirely to the safe transport of these volatile materials. By doing so, Victoria is finally coming into alignment with most other Australian jurisdictions, supporting national consistency of our freight and logistics businesses who cross borders every day. This bill gives legal effect to the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road & Rail and introduces a powerful general duty for transport operators, ensuring that whether dangerous goods are moving by road, by rail or by vessel on our inland waters, the risks to public safety, property and the environment must be eliminated or minimised.

One of the most critical fixes in this transport bill is how we handle waste. Under the old laws, the transport of dangerous goods which were also classified as waste fell into a dangerous regulatory black hole. A highly flammable or toxic chemical does not suddenly become safe just because a factory labels it as waste; the risks of fire, explosion or spillage are the same. The bill closes the loophole for good, ensuring that the transport of dangerous goods waste is subject to the exact same stringent safety and licensing requirements as all other dangerous goods. If you are trucking vats of chemical waste through our suburbs, you will need the proper dangerous goods driver and vehicle licences, plain and simple.

Having strong duties on paper means absolutely nothing if our regulators do not have the teeth to enforce them. For too long, WorkSafe inspectors have been hamstrung when trying to stop rogue operators. We have seen some really terrifying situations where people were conducting illegal fuel reprocessing, storing commercial explosives or refilling gas cylinders right in their residential backyard or their garages. Under the old laws, inspectors could not enter residential premises without the occupier’s consent or without going through the lengthy legal process of securing a search warrant; this bill changes that. We are empowering WorkSafe inspectors to enter residential premises without a warrant if they reasonably believe that dangerous goods are present and that a person is actively contravening our safety laws. When the safety of an entire street is at risk from an illegal chemical stockpile our inspectors need to be able to act immediately, and this legislation ensures that they can.

I will take a moment to thank our WorkSafe inspectors for the work that they do. It is tough work, and this bill, I hope, makes it a little bit easier to stop some of these rogue characters around the place. In it is also an expansion of WorkSafe’s power to intervene when a duty holder refuses to step up. If an inspector identifies a serious risk or issues a formal direction but the operator ignores it or if there is an immediate risk of harm to the community, the inspector now has the legal authority to step in, take control and do whatever is necessary to make that site safe. This bill even allows inspectors to enter neighbouring properties if that is what it takes to access the site and address the danger – I am thinking about some of those sheds out the back, for example. When WorkSafe has to step in and do the job that a rogue operator or a negligent landlord has failed to do, the Victorian taxpayer will no longer be left holding the bag. We are introducing robust, ironclad cost-recovery mechanisms. WorkSafe will be able to issue a costs notice to recover the full reasonable expenses of their intervention.

We also know that criminal prosecutions can take too long, so we are introducing a fast, effective civil penalty regime, giving WorkSafe another tool in their belt to hold companies accountable through the courts where criminal prosecution might not be warranted but serious financial penalties are. The courts will have the power to hit offenders with compliance and restraining orders, monetary benefit orders to strip away any financial profit made from cutting corners and adverse publicity orders that force a company to publicly admit what they did wrong. If their illegal transport activities damage our state’s infrastructure, the courts can issue road or rail authorisation compensation orders to make them pay for the repairs. These reforms do not just stand on their own, they are part of our deep commitment to workplace safety right across the state.

WorkSafe do an incredible job, and we are backing them every step of the way. I could talk about our investments, but really, one that stands out in my mind is the $22.4 million to keep workers safe, help injured workers return to work and provide support for the families who are grieving the unthinkable loss of a loved one due to a workplace death. That one cuts particularly close, I have got to say. To WorkSafe inspectors: we are also recruiting an extra 20 of you to crack down on the five most dangerous industries in our state, building on the 60 additional inspectors we have already funded since 2018. We have created a dedicated healthcare and social assistance compliance division within WorkSafe to protect our hardworking nurses, aged care workers and allied health staff. We have implemented landmark psychological health regulations to ensure that employers take psychosocial hazards like bullying, harassment and trauma just as seriously as physical dangers. We have established Return to Work Victoria, and we have set up the Workplace Incidents Consultative Committee. We make sure that the voices of those that have been personally impacted by workplace tragedies are guiding our reforms. Very soon we will see the construction of a workers memorial in Melbourne to provide a dedicated space for reflection and to serve as a constant reminder of why this work matters so much.

This package is about looking at the reality of the risks in our community and acting decisively. We cannot ever afford a repeat of the West Footscray or Campbellfield fires, and we cannot ask our firefighters to walk into illegally stockpiled chemical infernos because our laws were not able to stop the stockpiling in the first place. We are drawing a line in the sand: if you deal with dangerous goods in the state of Victoria, you will operate safely, you will protect the environment and you will be held accountable. I commend both bills to this house.

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:27): I rise to speak on the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 and indicate that Legalise Cannabis will be supporting both of these bills. The Dangerous Goods Act 1985 is outdated and no longer reflects the way chemicals are used, stored and handled throughout the state. These bills deliver a much-needed overhaul of Victoria’s dangerous goods transport laws. The core intention of these bills is well placed and widely supported. The bills enact key recommendations of the Palmer review following the West Footscray and Campbellfield fires in 2018 and 2019, which exposed shortcomings in oversight, information sharing and visibility for regulators. In concert these bills establish a modern framework to regulate the movement of dangerous goods throughout the state, strengthen oversight and enforcement and bring the handling of dangerous goods into alignment with contemporary occupational health and safety principles.

I want to start by thanking my recent parliamentary intern Aadi Arya, who wrote an excellent report on hazardous waste management in Victoria. His report, and indeed his analysis of these bills, has greatly helped in preparing my contribution. I should also mention that his report built on the excellent research of Jonah McRae-Palmer, my intern from last year. Aadi and Jonah’s research highlighted the importance of traceability, information sharing, regulatory coordination and visibility across the entire supply chain from the point where dangerous goods are generated to their transport, storage and eventual disposal. I would recommend their reports to the chamber. To quote Aadi’s report:

… poor visibility can delay intervention until waste has already been unlawfully dumped, stockpiled, burned, mishandled or discharged into the environment, risking severe ecological damage, food-chain transfer, risks to emergency responders, and heightened exposure for communities located near industrial sites, particularly Melbourne’s Western Metropolitan Region.

I would like to commend Ms Watt on her presentation, and I would also like to talk a bit about the 2018 Footscray fire, the largest industrial fire in Victoria since the 1991 Coode Island fire. At around 5 am on 30 August 2018 residents of West Footscray and Tottenham awoke to the sound of explosions and a black plume of smoke. Fire crews arriving on scene believed the site to be a wood recycling facility but were instead confronted by 44-gallon drums exploding into the air and Stony Creek, which abuts the property, literally ablaze. The massive warehouse held an illegal stockpile of highly flammable and toxic chemicals. Firefighters knew neither which chemicals were present nor their quantities. The smoke spread across Melbourne’s west, triggering emergency warnings and public health alerts. Residents were told to shelter indoors, and more than 40 schools and childcare centres were closed. The fire burnt for days, contaminating kilometres of Stony Creek and causing significant environmental damage.

It took more than 750 Melbourne Fire Brigade personnel over 16 days to contain that blaze. More than 100 injuries were reported by firefighters, some not appearing until weeks or even months later. Several of them continue to experience health problems, and the full extent of the cocktail of chemicals they were exposed to remains largely unknown. This waste did not magically appear. It did not arise from the operations of the warehouse. This dirty bomb of chemicals was covertly transported there by criminals for financial gain. This criminality was allowed to flourish in a vacuum of regulation, and these bills seek to fill that vacuum.

Focusing on the transport bill, it repeals the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 and creates a dedicated Dangerous Goods Transport Act to regulate the transport of dangerous goods by road, rail and inland waterways. It positions environmental protection as a central pillar of dangerous goods transport regulation and identifies eliminating risk to public safety, property and the environment as an object of the bill. It requires those involved in dangerous goods transport to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that transport is without risk to public safety, property or the environment.

Environmental risk is outlined in the aggravated offence provisions and in the WorkSafe Victoria inspectors’ entry, prohibition and intervention powers. These provisions are much needed as the impacts of environmental damage can last for decades and the cost of clean-up post incident can be immense. However, in clause 21, which covers incidents that trigger mandatory notifications to WorkSafe under clause 22, environmental damage is not listed as one of those. A pollution event may already trigger notification to EPA Victoria under the Environment Protection Act 2017, but it may not necessarily trigger direct notifications to WorkSafe. Indirectly the environmental damage can impact other workers, so ideally both regulators would be notified as soon as possible. If anyone was trying to imagine how that could be, I would just refer you back to the concept of a blazing Stony Creek coated with burning chemicals. In that way many, many people’s health can be damaged, many workers’ health can be damaged.

I did flag some amendments late in the piece on this. However, I understand that neither the government nor the opposition had adequate time to properly consider them, so we will not be proceeding with them. Hopefully these concerns can be dealt with through other mechanisms or regulations.

Another concern relates to clause 22, which requires incident notification by the consignor, the principal contractor and the driver or the vessel master. However, it does not extend that obligation to the consignee or receiving facility. In some cases it may be that the consignee is the one who first discovers a leak, contamination event or damaged container during unloading. While another party may eventually notify WorkSafe, the person who first identifies the incident may not have a direct statutory obligation to do so. I will be asking questions on these issues during the committee stage, and I am happy to be advised as to whether these concerns can be dealt with in other ways. The success of these reforms largely rests on whether WorkSafe will be adequately resourced to administer the scheme and exercise their new step-in powers and whether the reforms improve early detection of risk rather than simply strengthening enforcement after an incident occurs. These issues will be the focus of my questions during committee of the whole. These reforms are well overdue and most welcome. We also need the federal government to develop a nationally consistent approach to end-to-end supply chain management and traceability of dangerous goods, including stronger information sharing between regulators and better visibility of the movement of hazardous materials across jurisdictions.

I would like to finish by thanking those first responders who protected the community during the West Footscray fire and other fires, recognising that they did so, and continue to do so, at significant personal cost. They deserve more than our gratitude. They deserve laws that protect them in their dangerous work. We need to take every step to prevent similar disasters. Likewise, the community deserves to feel safe as the lines between industrial areas and housing become increasingly blurred, especially in the west. Time and time again people in my region find themselves living alongside dangerous and polluting industries and are expected to just live with it, to just cop it. This government did not think twice about asking West Footscray residents to live just metres from a massive diesel storage at the NEXTDC data centre. As the firefighters have alerted us, this centre will not only contain hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel to power generators but will be co-located with hundreds of tonnes of lithium ion batteries, which are almost impossible to put out. What could possibly go wrong? Imagine living 50 metres from that data centre. For the residents of West Footscray or Tottenham right next to that centre that is their new reality. Likewise across the west we are seeing the government fast-track the approval of data centres in areas that are in or immediately adjoining residential areas, with no consideration, with no transparency and with no evaluative framework provided to the community. In fact it has got to the point where this whole process is so opaque, where the government have even refused to release the document that they say would regulate this hazard. It is disgraceful. It is utterly disgraceful. There is no social licence for these data centres. There is no social licence for this government to do these things, and these are entirely compatible with the principles that are identified in this legislation. These reforms are sorely needed, but so much more work needs to be done to restore the community’s confidence. That said, I commend the bill to the house.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

President I rise to speak on the cognate debate for the dangerous goods and occupational health bills.

At their core, these two bills are about improving and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the public and the environment.

It is ensuring that Victoria has a regulatory framework that is enforceable and fit for purpose for the realities of today’s industries.

And it is about making sure that the workers who keep this state moving, and the communities that surround them, are properly protected under the law.

These bills are long overdue and I am proud to stand here today in support of them.

The Dangerous Goods referred to in this legislation are substances that pose inherent risks to people or property.

They are goods that include chemicals that are corrosive, flammable, combustible, explosive, oxidising, or otherwise hazardous.

They are goods that are at the same time integral to our economy yet pose inherent and unfortunate risks to the community if they are mishandled.

This Bill came about from a clear and urgent need for reform following a series of serious industrial incidents right here in Victoria.

After the devastating West Footscray and Campbellfield industrial fires in 2018 and 2019, investigations discovered illegal stockpiles of chemical waste.

And emitted toxic black smoke that could be seen from the surrounding suburbs.

More than 50 schools and childcare centers were forced to close after the Footscray fire alone.

I remember watching the news and seeing residents talk about what they had been through – nosebleeds, asthma attacks, headaches, nausea, respiratory problems, and skin or eye irritation – and this was weeks after the fires had been contained.

These were serious, large-scale health issues experienced by many Victorians.

And what is even more alarming is the nature of the materials involved.

Chemical waste of this kind is highly toxic, flammable, and reactive, and as these incidents demonstrate, improper handling of these materials leads to large-scale contamination of the environment and high-risk public health and safety issues.

These materials also carry long-term consequences, such as developmental and reproductive harm, that may impact a person for years to come.

It also has devastating impacts on the workers.

These are people who take pride in their work, who show up and do their jobs, and yet they are also those immediately exposed to these high-risk materials.

As someone who has worked in the transport industry, I understand the very real dangers that workers in this industry face every single day.

It is the drivers, the loaders, the logistics workers, and the people on the ground who bear the risks and consequences.

And it weighs on the workers, it weighs on their families, and it weighs on the communities that surround the roads, rail lines, and waterways where these dangerous goods may travel every single day.

The workers of this industry, along with the broader Victorian community, deserve better protection.

They deserve to know that the law has their back.

And actions must be taken to actively address the risks associated with transporting dangerous goods within the borders of Victoria.

It was precisely these concerns that led the Victorian Government to commission the Independent Review of the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, led by Andrew Palmer KC.

The Palmer Report was a thorough and comprehensive examination of Victoria’s dangerous goods law and the regulatory framework surrounding them.

The Palmer Report found that current regulatory frameworks were no longer fit for purpose, difficult to navigate, and are inconsistent with other regulatory frameworks governing the management and transport of dangerous goods.

It also identified a gap in regulations around the transport of reportable priority waste, which despite carrying the same risks as other dangerous goods during transport, it was not subject to the same safety requirements as that outlined in the Environment Protection Act 2017.

One of the key recommendations in the Palmer Report was that the transport of dangerous goods should be regulated by its own Act and regulations that adopt, as far as possible, the structure, language and concepts of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

In response to the handing down of the Palmer Report, the Victorian Government supported 22 of the recommendations in full, 15 in principle, required further consideration of 11, and noted 1.

Overall, the key theme of the government’s response to the report was that the existing regulatory framework was outdated and required reform.

It emphasised that, going forward, a new framework would need to focus on managing risk, preventing accidents and disasters, as well as creating regulation which is simpler to understand and follow for those individuals and businesses who need to use these sorts of dangerous goods.

In doing so, this new framework would help to keep workers safe, keep the environment safe, and keep the community safe.

Keeping Victorians safe is one of the most important duties we have as parliamentarians and as a government.

It is something which we in this Labor Government treat with the utmost seriousness.

That is why we have gone through the process of developing these bills and why we intend to see these bills signed into law.

Starting first with the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill.

This bill does a number of key things to provide an improved regulatory framework to keep Victorian communities, environments and workers safe.

First, the bill makes it such that the regulation of dangerous goods falls under the OHS Act.

This has the effect of streamlining the regulatory framework by bringing the handling and sale of dangerous goods under one act.

Another component of this bill is that it introduces civil penalty provisions and for breaches of occupational health and safety obligations.

Under this framework, if a civil penalty provision is contravened, a court may require payment of a pecuniary penalty or through other orders.

This is important because this means that the person responsible may be required to fix unsafe practices, stop harmful conduct, or publicly account for their actions.

Regulators and courts will also be able to respond appropriately to different types of non-compliance, especially when criminal prosecution is not warranted.

In doing so, they provide more flexible and proportionate enforcement options.

Moreover, this bill also strengthens accountability of liable officers by introducing a positive duty for officers to exercise due diligence.

This means that officers must take reasonable steps to understand the risks associated with dangerous goods and ensure that body corporates are complying with their duties.

This duty also extends to officers of a partnership or unincorporated body or association.

Should an officer fail in their due diligence, they may be subject to penalty.

This provision makes it clear that responsibility does not rest solely with workers on the ground, but also with those responsible for enforcing and maintaining compliance.

By ensuring that officers are actively exercising their due diligence, this reform reinforces a culture of safety from the top down.

This bill also creates a new offence for an aggravated breach of an employer’s duty to employees under section 21 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

Aligning it with the corresponding offence for aggravated breach of the general duty relating to dangerous goods.

This aggravated offence is designed to cover more serious cases, such as when an employer fails to meet their responsibilities and exposes workers to significant risk of harm, and where the employer ought to reasonably know that the risk existed.

In this way, this bill ensures stronger consequences for conduct that goes beyond ordinary non-compliance and reaches higher levels of risk.

Furthermore, this bill also brings the maximum infringement penalty under the Occupational Health and Safety Act into alignment with the amounts laid out in the Attorney General’s guidelines to the Infringements Act 2006.

This ensures that penalties are strong enough to deter lower-level breaches, rather than being treated as just another cost of doing businesses.

Importantly, these changes apply across both the dangerous goods and occupational health and safety frameworks.

By strengthening these penalties, this bill creates a more balanced enforcement approach.

Ensuring that deterrence can be achieved by the penalties set out for infringement in a manner that is quick, proportionate, and effective.

In the Palmer report, it was also noted that WorkSafe requires adequate powers to ensure action can be taken to address a circumstance of serious risk.

Intervention is often necessary within circumstances where the safety of the Victorian community is at stake.

Allowing action to be taken in the instance a person has refused or failed to comply, or is unable to comply safely with a direction given by an inspector to address the safety risk.

This bill also gives inspectors a new entry power.

Giving them to access to a place if such entry is necessary to allow the inspector to exercise their power of intervention in addressing a serious risk.

It is true, that under the legislation currently in place through the Dangerous Goods Act 1985 that WorkSafe inspectors have the capacity to intervene.

However, one of the key findings of the Palmer Report is that these powers were inadequate in being able to fully take in the cause and scope of the risks that require an intervention.

When WorkSafe is unable to successfully intervene when conditions warrant it, there are going to be adverse effects.

It limits their ability to effectively regulate dangerous goods and keep the Victorian community safe.

That is why in this bill we are expanding the ability for WorkSafe inspectors to intervene and address cases of serious risk when they arise as they sometimes do.

Within this bill, there is also a provision to help ensure that WorkSafe can recover the expenses that are accrued by their operations in acting against those who have caused risk to the Victorian community.

This bill introduces a cost recovery mechanism that can be used by WorkSafe to seek reimbursement from those responsible for allowing risk to arise.

WorkSafe will also be able to place a charge on properties that have had action taken against them, but where there are still unpaid amounts of money owed to WorkSafe.

These changes mean that those responsible cannot avoid their obligations and that any remediation work can be recovered.

Importantly, noting that the owners of a property may not always be the responsible party in causing a risk, this bill ensures that landlords are not unfairly burdened by an issue caused by a tenant.

In these circumstances, landlords will be able to seek to recover damages from tenants if it is the neglect of the tenants that caused the WorkSafe action to take place.

This is a crucial step in making sure we are striking the right balance between holding those responsible accountable and protecting those who are not at fault.

Furthermore, implementing a cost recovery mechanism also means that we are maintaining a fair, sustainable, and well-functioning regulatory system, whilst ensuring that WorkSafe remains supported and resourced to continue carrying out the important work of keeping Victorian’s safe.

I would like to now speak on the key reforms introduced by the Dangerous Goods Transport bill.

First, the bill creates a new standalone principal Act specifically to regulate the transport of dangerous goods, including high consequence dangerous goods and explosives, by road, rail, and inland waterway vessel.

This is a significant structural reform,

Because it brings together all of the relevant transport-specific dangerous goods obligations and makes it easier for businesses, workers, and regulators to understand what is required and to ensure that those requirements are met.

In doing so, it will repeal the Dangerous Goods Act 1985, which is over 40 years old, replacing it with a framework that is fit for purpose and better reflects the realities of industries today.

And because the nature of goods being transported, the scale of the industry, the complexity of modern supply chains, and our understanding of the risks involved have evolved significantly, it is only right that our laws evolve with them.

These new laws will be more modern, more up to date, and more able to deliver regulations which are both strong and easy to follow.

In doing so, we will be creating laws which are ultimately more impactful and more capable of keeping workers, communities, and the environment safe from the risks that come with transporting dangerous goods.

Second, this Bill introduces a broad general duty requiring a person involved in the transport of dangerous goods to ensure that dangerous goods are transported in a manner that is safe and without risks to public safety, property and the environment.

This general duty will be modeled on the duties-based frameworks of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and the Environment Protection Act 2017.

What this means is that the new legislation will adopt similar obligations and languages as the aforementioned Acts,

Thus, we are ensuring that duty holders are not navigating entirely different regulatory approaches but rather operating within a framework with familiar structures to the one they already comply with.

This promotes consistency and streamlines laws for duty holders and the wider community and bridges the gaps in existing framework identified by the Palmer Report that contributed to non-compliance.

At the same time, it closes a gap in current regulations by holding the transport of dangerous goods to the same safety standards as all other dangerous goods.

Furthermore, this duty is supported by regulations, including the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road & Rail (ADG Code), Compliance Codes and non-statutory guidance.

This will provide duty holders with clear and practical guidance on how the transport of dangerous goods general duty should be performed in their day-to-day operations.

Making it easier to follow the regulations reduces noncompliance, makes it easier for companies to do the right thing, and makes it easier for companies who are doing the right thing to continue to do business.

Decreasing noncompliance also means that companies who are following the regulations will not be undercut by those who are not doing the right thing.

President, these two bills represent the biggest structural reform of the regulatory framework surrounding dangerous goods in four decades.

They serve to make the Victorian public safer, Victorian workers safer, and the Victorian Environment safer.

And that is why I support these bills.

I commend the bill to the Chamber.

 Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Treasurer, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (17:39): Thank you to the speakers who have contributed to the bill. I think we know why we are here. People have talked about some examples of behaviour and conduct that are wanting to be addressed by this reform following a comprehensive review. I know there are quite a few questions, so I am happy to deal with those in committee, probably just through clause 1 if people are pretty happy to do it that way. It is in your hands. I commend the bill.